...AND HE AROSE FROM AMID THE ASSEMBLY AND TOOK A SPEAR IN HIS HAND...[Pinchas] removed the point and placed it under his garment... (Sanhedrin 82a)

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Super-Duper-Markets Come To Jerusalem

Call me lame but I’m someone that gets excited over nice supermarkets. I get even more excited when those supermarkets are in Israel. And when a new store opens that can rival a supergiant like Walmart or Costco, in size, service and value and it’s just a hop, skip and a jump away from my home – well, then you know I’m going to blog about it!

Osher Ad opened its doors in March and I finally got to check it out tonight. Let me tell you, it’s the first place I’ve been to in Israel (certainly in Jerusalem) that I glanced from wall to wall and said – “yeah, wow, this place IS really big!” Walmart would not be embarrassed to open something this size and at least now in its opening weeks the prices can definitely compete with Cosco’s deals.

Now the reason I thought this fit to post on Kumah is because it’s wonderful to see growth in Israel – and this is real growth! Olim from America often lament about missing Walmart or Cosco and wonder why they don’t open up in Israel. Don’t get me wrong. Osher Ad is not Walmart. In fact one of the workers told me that himself. (We’ll get to that later.)

But it is a really wonderful feeling to see quality fruits and vegetables piled to the sky (all certified by Rav Efrati, by the way) with prices you can only find in “the shuk” if you spend hours searching. And then while you are shopping you hear an announcement over the loudspeaker. No, not for a cleanup on aisle 3, but announcing “if anyone is interested there will be a minyan for maariv in fifteen minutes, located in the biet haknesset in the back of the store. That’s right, this store comes complete with its own beautiful biet haknesset with minyanim every hour on the hour.

And so during my shopping adventure I spotted a Crockpot (only 100NIS!!!) and grabbed it. (Kumah’s Malkah has been telling me to get one for years.) Then realizing I would need to get the serving pot toveled I asked the guy manning the “appliances and electronics” section if this place has a kaylim mikvah. “No,” he answered my heavy accented Hebrew in his mother tongue English, “this isn’t Walmart!” I wasn’t aware that Walmart had mikvahs but I told him that I noticed the store had a shul and I figured it could have a mikvah too.

Anyway if any Osher Ad management people out there are reading this blog post it would be really cool to build a kaylim mikvah on site. I think that was the only thing to it was missing.